Playboy Interview: Ralph Ginzburg

In 1957, the Supreme Court established, in Roth vs. United States, that, obscenity was not "speech" in the constitutional meaning of the word and therefore could not be protected under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which, reads: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." At the same time, the Court established a relatively liberal formula for recognizing obscenity, and in subsequent decisions, steadily made the criterion more liberal. On March 2, 1966, in a review of "Story of O" for The New York Times, Eliot Fremont-Smith hailed the free publication of that book in the United States as "an event of considerable importance" in that it served, "to fracture the last rationale of censorship, our late and somewhat desperate distinction between 'literary' pornography and 'hard-core' pornography."

Less than three weeks later, the Supreme Court proved Mr. Fremont-Smith wrong—at least temporarily—to the considerable concern and distress of many of this country's leading authorities on constitutional law. On March 21, the Court handed down opinions on three cases concerning "obscene literature." By a six-to-three vote, the Court affirmed the conviction of Edward Mishkin of New York for publishing "sadistic and masochistic" material, but reversed a Massachusetts ruling, again by a six-to-three vote, that the 18th Century novel "Fanny Hill" is obscene.

The key decision affirmed, by a five-to-four vote, the 1963 conviction of Ralph Ginzburg for having distributed three publications—Eros, "The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity" and the newsletter Liaison—through the United States mails. Ginzburg's sentence was five years in prison and $42,000 in fines.

What made the Ginzburg decision so unexpected was that it appeared to reverse the Court's liberalizing trend concerning a definition of obscenity. According to Justice Brennan, the Roth case and subsequent decisions had defined a publication as obscene if "(a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex, (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description of sexual matters, and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value."

The majority in the Ginzburg case did not rule that the publications at issue were necessarily obscene under the established formula, but instead added a new criterion: the manner in which a publication is advertised and promoted. "Where the purveyor's sole emphasis is on the sexually provocative aspects of his publication," wrote Justice Brennan for the majority, "the fact may be decisive in the determination of obscenity." The opinion found that the "leer of the sensualist" pervaded the advertising and promotion of the three publications. Ginzburg was guilty of "titillation," "pandering" and "shoddy" and "salacious" promotional methods. The exact meaning, effect and implications of this new criterion have become a matter of concern to virtually everyone in the communications field, as well as a topic of active debate among constitutional lawyers. By polarizing opinion on censorship, Ginzburg has also been the subject of reams of emotional editorial opinion in the press, and the focus of heated discussion on TV and radio.

At first stunned, Ginzburg himself quickly added to the flaring controversy. On the afternoon of the Court's decision, at a hastily called press conference in front of the statue of Benjamin Franklin opposite New York's City Hall, Ginzburg proclaimed: "America is not only no longer a peace-loving country, but it is also no longer a liberty-loving country. I am confident that future Americans will look back at today's decision with shame and remorse and will regard it not only as the triumph of censorship over free speech, but of psychopathy over mental health. Today's decision was worthy of a Russian court, not of the United States Supreme Court. I am confident that history will vindicate me, and that eventually America will stop branding its artists, writers and publishers as criminal."

Why a press conference in front of a statue of Benjamin Franklin? Because Ginzburg, with his characteristic flair for the dramatic, was able thereby to forcefully remind the assembled reporters that "Franklin, the founder of our post office and America's first postmaster general, once said that nothing should be banned from the mails except inflammables and perishables and that no form of censorship should be tolerated by the American people."

Throughout the country, there was a wide cleavage in opinion on the case as "decent literature" committees cheered and civil libertarians mobilized to defend the First Amendment. National magazines, which normally fight like tigers for freedom of the press, appeared to have a difficult time making up their minds about the Ginzburg case. The House of Luce criticized the decision in Life: "... the Court seems to be saying that a dirty book in a plain wrapper might get by, while a less gamy book, luridly advertised, will not. Instead of settling the issue, the justices appear to have opened a whole new set of questions and test cases to bedevil the censors and the courts." But in Time, the decision was hailed for indicating that "The Supreme Court seems to be catching up with the moral election returns." Time's chief competitor, Newsweek, fell that the Court had "wound up leaving an already tangled body of law more puzzling than ever." And, neatly straddling the editorial fence, The Saturday Evening Post favored "an extremely liberal interpretation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and a free press," deplored the lack of wisdom and charity in "imposing a prison sentence on Ginzburg," but nonetheless concluded that the "general limits" imposed by the Court "make sense."

Ginzburg himself remained acutely controversial. Even some of his supporters in the press and in the intellectual community regretted, as one reporter for The New York Times put it, "that we have to go on the line for a guy like Ginzburg."

Yet some of those who know Ginzburg personally find it difficult to understand why he arouses so much antagonism. He is, to be sure, brashly outspoken and a self-designated and highly successful "promoter." He also, however, has more than a modicum of courage, firmly believes in the social as well as the commercial value of his publications, and thoroughly lives up to the purported American male ideal of the hard-working businessman who is also a devoted husband and father. As Robert Christgau observed in the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday magazine, New York: If he has a vice, it is pride, manifested in work."

Born in Brooklyn of immigrant parents, Ginzburg has been, in fact, a prototypical American "success story." A graduate of the New York public school system, he went on to the School of Business at the City College of New York (where he edited The Ticker, the school newspaper). At 23, he was director of circulation promotion at Look. Three years later he was articles editor of Esquire. On assignment from that magazine, he wrote "An Unhurried View of Erotica." When that survey was not printed in the magazine, he published it himself in book form with introductions by Theodor Reik and George Jean Nathan. It sold over a quarter of a million copies.

In 1961 Ginzburg announced a new quarterly, Eros, which would "deal joyfully with the subjects of love and sex." Four issues were published before Ginzburg was indicted in 1963 for mailing obscene literature. He was tried and convicted in a Federal court in Philadelphia. While battling that case through the higher courts, Ginzburg began a new publication, the crusading Fact, which now has a circulation of over 250,000.

Now, suddenly, Ginzburg, at 36, appears to have had his ascent halted—for a five-year immolation in prison. To discover Ginzburg's own views of the Supreme Court decision, as it affects him personally and as it affects free speech in America, Playboy interviewer Nat Hentoff went to see the beleaguered publisher on a sunny morning in mid-April. That day's New York Times carried a news report on Ginzburg's request of the Supreme Court that it rehear his case. (Since 1957, the Court has granted only two rehearings in criminal cases.) He had told the Court, the Times reported, that "it had trapped him into violating the obscenity laws by announcing lax standards for obscenity and then tightening them in deciding his case."

The offices of Fact are on the 26th floor of an office building on West 40th Street in midtown New York. Its staff is small and its suite of rooms is large. In shirt sleeves, Ginzburg was standing at a table, scanning the Washington and New York papers for accounts of his petition for a rehearing.

He led the way up a spiral staircase to his airy private office, four flights above. Most of the time during the long interview, Ginzburg was his customary, bristlingly energetic self—answering the phone, riffling through memos on his desk, leaning forward to make a series of staccato points. Occasionally, however, he seemed suddenly frozen in mid-gesture, struck again by the imminence of his separation from his work, his wife and his three children. He would then shake his head in renewed bewilderment and grief, only to hurl himself back into the interview, the telephone, the memos.

On the wall across the room from his desk was a quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes: "A man should share the action and passion of his times at peril of being judged not to have lived." Whatever his original intentions as a publisher, Ginzburg was now a major figure in the intensifying debate as to how free "free speech" can be in America.

The interview over, Ginzburg walked down the spiral staircase to work with his editor, Warren Boroson, on the next issue of Fact. A visitor asked to borrow a copy of Eros, containing a much-discussed article, "The Natural Superiority of Women as Eroticists," by Drs. Ezberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen.

"Be sure to return it," said Ginzburg, "it's one of the few we have left."

"I will," the visitor promised. "Next week I'll mail it back."

Ginzburg, his eyes large behind his glasses, was shocked. "Don't do that," he said. "Don't mail it!"

[Q] Playboy: Before the Supreme Court decision was handed down, you appeared quite hopeful that your conviction would be reversed rather than affirmed. In an issue of Fact in which you reviewed the history of your troubles in the courts, you gave a number of reasons why you felt your case stood "a better-than-average chance" for reversal. Now, how would you describe your reaction to the decision?

[A] Ginzburg: I was flabbergasted, particularly since it was evident during the hearings before the Court that the Government was virtually admitting it had no case under the Roth criteria. And I wasn't the only one who was flabbergasted by the decision. Men who are considered real conservatives in the legal profession—Harrison Tweed, Whitney North Seymour, among others—have filed briefs with the United States Supreme Court urging that I be given a new trial. In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a friencl-of-the-court brief supporting my petition for a rehearing. In it, the A. C. L. U. states that the decision is "replete with dangerous implications for freedom of expression."

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any intimation that the Court would add a new element to their criteria of obscenity—the advertising and promotion of publications?

[A] Ginzburg: No. The Court said in the Roth case that a publication was not obscene if it had "even the slightest redeeming social importance." It was on the basis of this that I decided Eros could be published. Eros contained reproductions of many masterpieces of art, as well as original contributions by some of the most gifted contemporary writers, artists and photographers. If Shakespeare doesn't have redeeming social value, then I'd like to know who does. So I thought I was completely within the law. Indeed, in the advertising for Eros, I stated that only because of current Supreme Court rulings was it possible to publish this magazine. I was stunned when they came out of left field and—zap!—hit me with the advertising bit.

I had no idea I would be accused of intending to "pander," and, accordingly, I had no opportunity to make an adequate defense. As Justice Black, said in his dissent to my case, "The fact is that Ginzburg ... is now finally and authoritatively condemned to serve five years in prison for distributing printed matter about sex which neither Ginzburg nor anyone else could possibly have known to be criminal."

[Q] Playboy: What do you think the Court was trying to establish by adding this new element to the obscenity formula?

[A] Ginzburg: I think they were seeking a complicated rationalization for abandoning due process of law in order to incarcerate Ralph Ginzburg. You see, the criteria set by the Roth decision were themselves vague. How does one determine what stimulates prurient interests? What are community standards? Who decides what has or has not "redeeming social importance"? Justice Black has pointed out concerning just one of those criteria: "It seems quite apparent to me that human beings, serving either as judges or jurors, could not be expected to give any sort of decision on this element [of appeal to prurient interest in sex] which would even remotely promise any kind of uniformity in the enforcement of this law."

Now, in my case, Justice Brennan, who wrote the majority opinion, says that even if the publications themselves aren't obscene by these vague standards, they become obscene if the advertising for them "panders" and "titillates." As Justice Potter Stewart points out in his dissent, those words have no legal significance. The result is that we're left with no guidelines at all as to what is obscene. The only way to find out is to risk going to prison. You can hope that the Supreme Court will hear your case, and then you can pray it will reverse the lower courts. The situation has become absurd, like something out of Orwell or Kafka. "Titillate," for example, means to excite pleasurably. To me that's a lovely thing—hardly a crime.

[Q] Playboy: Justice Brennan also referred to the "sole emphasis ... on the sexually provocative aspects" of your publications in your advertising. Yet Richard Morgan, who teaches international relations at Columbia University, writes about you in the Neiu Leader, "Whatever one may think of that gentleman's wares, it is a fact that his advertising contained multiple emphasis. Psychological, aesthetic and literary appeals were combined with the erotic, and it does not do to brush this record aside with talk about a nonexistent 'sole emphasis.' "

[A] Ginzburg: Exactly. The fact is that Eros had a very real philosophy, which was that love and sex are beautiful and that mature people—everyone, as a matter of fact—ought to approach them without shame or fear. As for The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity, it has been praised as a significant, socially valuable document by world-renowned psychiatrist Dr. Theodor Reik, by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Hermann J. Muller and by many other scientists and psychiatrists. Liaison—the third publication in the indictment—consisted largely of interviews with psychologists; reviews of articles in medical, folklore and other specialty magazines; and digests of scientific papers.

[Q] Playboy: Returning to the subject of your advertising, Justice Douglas wrote in his dissent: "The advertisements for these publications ... promised candor in the treatment of matters pertaining to sex, and at the same time proclaimed that they were artistic or otherwise socially valuable. In effect, then, these advertisements represented that the publications are not obscene."

[A] Ginzburg: That's what makes the majority decision so incomprehensible. The fact is, I always thought of Eros as an antidote to the average conception of obscenity. With very few exceptions, sex has traditionally been relegated to slimy, tawdry, mean, crude and inartistic publications by our society. Eros was the direct opposite of all these things. The Court, in effect, is preventing talented, gifted people from dealing honestly with sex in print, and to the extent that the Court succeeds, society is that much poorer.

[Q] Playboy: But was all your advertising and promotion that noble? Justice Brennan noted that Eros first tried to obtain mailing privileges from the post offices of Intercourse and Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, and then did get permission from the postmaster of Middlesex, New Jersey. He considered this sort of activity as proving the "leer of the sensualist."

[A] Ginzburg: He's wrong. First of all, we didn't use either the Blue Ball or Intercourse postmark. But even if we did, I don't see how that would have made Eros any more obscene than, let's say, a wedding invitation from those mailing addresses. And furthermore, I'd like to point out that although we did mail from Middlesex, New Jersey, we had no intention of exploiting the sexual connotation of the name. We mailed from Middlesex simply because one of the largest mail-order facilities in the Eastern United States was located there. Anyone who thinks otherwise is really doing my sense of humor an injustice.

[Q] Playboy: On that point, Richard Morgan in the New Leader article says of Justice Brennan's concern with the names of those towns: "One is reminded of that working-class puritanism which holds above all that sex must be humorless. Is a man to serve five years for a bad joke?"

[A] Ginzburg: Right. That is one of our national problems—that sex is considered so sacrosanct it can't be joked about. Improper, ugly and antisocial behavior has been imputed to me by judges who are really reflecting attitudes which must be their own, because they certainly aren't mine. In retrospect, I regret that those postmarks were ever applied for, since the whole damn case seems to have turned on Blue Ball and Intercourse. I'm willing to concede that, at worst, they were high school humor, but I don't think they were tasteless.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe that any of your promotion material was tasteless?

[A] Ginzburg: Absolutely not. It was elegantly written and handsomely printed. We used beautiful old engravings for art, and we reproduced them on expensive antiqued paper.

[Q] Playboy: What, by your own criteria, is tasteless and vulgar?

[A] Ginzburg: Personally, I think most cigarette ads are vulgar. I think photographs showing B-52s dropping napalm on Vietnamese civilians are vulgar. No, let me make that stronger. They're grotesque, they're obscene. But I wouldn't put a man in jail for publishing such pictures. Good taste is absolutely indefinable in any legal sense.

[Q] Playboy: It has been suggested that a person's attitudes in the sexual area can be correlated with his political views. Do you feel, for instance, that the forces of censorship are linked with the forces of political reaction?

[A] Ginzburg: Very possibly, but it's hard to make a case for it. For example, I've always had the feeling that people who are liberal in politics are also liberal about sex. Yet look at the justices on both sides in my case. Justices Harlan and Stewart are considered politically conservative, but they voted for my acquittal. On the other hand, Justices Warren, Brennan and Fortas—all regarded as liberals—voted for my conviction.

[Q] Playboy: Apart from their political views, were you surprised at the individual votes of the various justices?

[A] Ginzburg: Yes and no. Warren showed promise of being progressive in this area when he wrote the decision in a motion-picture case some years ago, but since then he's consistently voted against a more liberal interpretation of the obscenity laws. Brennan has a liberal record on civil liberties, but, apparently, it doesn't extend to sexual matters. In a radio interview, Fred Graham, a reporter for The New York Times, described the manner in which the decisions were read by the individual justices. He said Brennan was red-faced and emotionally wrought as he read his opinion.

Fortas was a surprise. His law firm wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in the Roth case, and in that brief, they adopted Justice Black's position that all obscenity laws ought to be ruled unconstitutional as violations of the First Amendment. Why he has changed his position since coming to the Court is difficult to explain. Some people might say he's being hypocritical or confused, or perhaps he didn't want to come out on the unpopular side of such a controversial vote his first time around. But it's all conjecture. White and Clark, who also voted against me, ran true to form. They have always been conservative on matters of sex.

Black and Douglas, of course, have long been an inspiration to me. Their ringing dissents on my behalf will be a further inspiration during my years in prison.

[Q] Playboy: So far, more judges have been against you than for you. In your article in Fact on your odyssey through the courts, you wrote—and this was before four Supreme Court judges voted in your favor—"I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to be able to communicate meaningfully on the subject of sex with any judge. A span of 30 years stands between me and the average Federal judge, nearly a whole generation of the most rapid change in sex attitudes this country has ever known. Hell, we don't even speak the same language!" You added that while to you "sex is exhilarating and a source of great strength." Judge Gerald McLaughlin, the 72-year-old bachelor on the United States Court of Appeals who affirmed your conviction in the first Federal court, said that sex is "one of the great weaknesses of human beings." Do you feel that this generational lag concerning sexual values had something to do with the Supreme Court's decision against you?

[A] Ginzburg: Absolutely. It's safe to say that a majority of the justices on the United States Supreme Court were not brought up as young men on the editorial fare of Playboy magazine, whereas the judges who will sit 30 years from now will have read Playboy and will know that not only can love and sex be taken in stride, but they can be enormously pleasurable, and they are not sinful. I don't think the young people of today consider sex "one of the greatest human weaknesses." But when Judge McLaughlin was growing up, the idea was common. So this terrible time gap does exist.

[Q] Playboy: But what about Justices Black and Douglas? Black is 80 years old, and Douglas is 67. Why didn't the time gap affect them?

[A] Ginzburg: I was making a generalization. Black is a sterling exception. He doesn't consider material dealing with sex a form of "non-speech." You see, he believes the authors of the Constitution meant what they wrote when they wrote it. "No law abridging freedom of speech means no law, " Black has often said. Douglas, who always votes with Black on this point, is in addition a very sophisticated, well read and modern man—in spite of his years.

[Q] Playboy: In your case, Justice Douglas wrote: "The use of sex symbols to sell literature, today condemned by the Court, engrafts another exception on First Amendment rights that is as unwarranted as the judge-made exception concerning obscenity. This new exception condemns an advertising technique as old as history. The advertisements of our best magazines are chock-full of thighs, ankles, calves, bosoms, eyes and hair, to draw the potential buyers' attention to lotions, tires, food, liquor, clothing, autos and even insurance policies." What implications do you feel the decision in your case will have on the advertising policies of magazine and book publishers of all kinds?

[A] Ginzburg: To start with, I think Playboy might find itself the victim of ambitious small-town prosecutors across the country.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you cite Playboy, since the key issue in your case involved advertising and promotion, yet you know that Playboy never emphasizes its sexual side in ads and promotion copy. Would you call Playboy's "What Sort of Man Reads Playboy?" ads sexy?

[A] Ginzburg: All right, acknowledging that Playboy's advertising and promotion are not at issue, still some of the ads in it—as well as in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and all sorts of prestigious publications—might be in trouble under the Supreme Court's new definition of obscenity. Take perfume. Most advertisements for perfume stress that if you spray this on, the man in your life will be sexually attracted to you. Isn't this "pandering," according to the Court? Would not perfume makers now be legally liable to prosecution? And in almost every station on the New York subways there's a big poster showing an attractive blonde with the message, "Have you had any lately?" It's an ad for a wine. Or take a girdle advertisement in the New York Times Sunday Magazine showing a half-clad young lady, with the caption, Don't Peep, Tom! Under the new Supreme Court definition of obscenity, those people could be prosecuted.

[Q] Playboy: That might be stretching it a bit. Yet, three days after the Supreme Court decision, Sidney Zion, a news analyst for The New York Times, wrote: "Legal experts [agree] that the novel concept announced in the five-to-four decision—that a lurid promotion can make obscene a borderline work that would otherwise pass judicial muster—was likely to result in massive prosecutions across the country against book publishers, booksellers and the movie industry." Is there any evidence of that as yet?

[A] Ginzburg: In New York City, the new Chief Inspector of Police, Sanford Garelik, has announced that arrests for obscene literature have increased 300 percent since the Court's ruling. In San Francisco, a number of movie houses have been shut down. In Richmond, Virginia, a movie house was closed. And another was shut down in Tucson, Arizona. In a city in Maryland, Catcher in the Rye has been banned. And these crackdowns are indeed going to become massive in the months ahead.

[Q] Playboy: A reader of The Playboy Forum—in which, incidentally, a number of letters concerning your case are printed—sent in an ad from that sterling family newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle for a movie headlined Super Women. The illustration shows a woman in black tights with a hefty décolletage wrestling a man to the ground, and in another view, wielding a whip. The title reads, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and the credits include "San Francisco's Topless Tassel Twirler." The second feature is Mud Honey, "a film of ribaldry and violence made from the juice of life!" The theater management apparently thought the advertising was too lurid, so they printed in typewriter type at the top of the ad the following disclaimer: "Adults: Although these films are of redeeming social importance and of artistic merit, they are recommended exclusively for liberal persons over 18 years of age. This program is ultra-realistically sordid, yet it provides insight into the psychological bases for uncommon pathological behavior. Because of the recent Supreme Court decision on obscenity (Eros), we are attempting to advertise both honestly and in good taste." This would seem to be one direction in which advertising practices may go. Another direction was predicted by attorney Ephraim London, who said: "The public will soon know that the more circumspect the ad, the rougher the material. They'll just make the same stuff look like a religious book." Do you agree?

[A] Ginzburg: That's certainly a possibility. But from a sales point of view, I don't think that approach will work, and therefore I doubt that it will become widespread. There is certainly going to be, in any case, an awful lot of activity across the country directed at policing the newsstands. Many magazines will be subject to a lot of pressure. Many far-out "nudie" films simply won't survive if the theater owner cannot indicate on a marquee the type of film he's playing inside.

[Q] Playboy: Will the decision, like the Prohibition law, lead to bootlegging of certain kinds of publications?

[A] Ginzburg: This has already begun. The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity—which was grossly mistitled but is nonetheless a valid and valuable case history of the sex life of a woman—has been run off in a 20.000-copy pirated edition in San Francisco.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that, as with Prohibition, there will be such a strong countermovement against rigid enforcement of the new ruling that the Court may be forced to reverse its stand?

[A] Ginzburg: Yes. Ulysses Grant, who was certainly not one of this country's great Presidents, did have a brilliant insight when he said the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously. And that's what I think is going to happen.

[Q] Playboy: Justice Stewart pointed out in his dissent that since you were not charged with "commercial exploitation," "pandering" or "titillation," your conviction on these grounds deprived you of due process of law.

[A] Ginzburg: Certainly. The case should have been decided on the merits of the material itself, not on how it was sold.

[Q] Playboy: This brings us to the subject of obscenity itself. Apart from advertising techniques, do you think the new decision will, in the long run, encourage greater judicial strictures in print and in films?

[A] Ginzburg: Not in the long run. You see, what the suppressors of obscenity are really trying to do is suppress sex, and sex is the instinct of life itself. It cannot be suppressed. It cannot be swept under a rug. It cannot be banned indefinitely. And that's why all attempts at censorship of sex must ultimately be futile. The direction in this country toward greater honesty concerning sex is clear, and its momentum is such that the decision in my case—and the subsequent wave of repression that will follow—cannot hold. You can see this long-range momentum everywhere. Subjects such as venereal disease and birth control are reported on regularly and candidly in such publications as The New York Times, which 20 or 30 years ago wouldn't even have mentioned the words. Americans generally are becoming much hipper, much more sophisticated and somewhat less neurotic about sex.

For another example, who would have thought 15 years ago that in 1966 the United States Government would be providing birth-control information and birth-control appliances to women, unmarried as well as married, not only within the United States but throughout the world? We're moving very rapidly in the area of sexual liberalization, and America has an opportunity to score tremendously in the eyes of the people around the world if it will only continue in this direction. That's why the decision in my case is so unfortunate. But I think it's only a backward step, not a major backward trend, and I'm convinced it's only a temporary backward step.

[Q] Playboy: Looking backward, do you feel that the seeds of your own imminent imprisonment may be found in the Roth decision of 1957, even though that is usually regarded as the springboard in the Court's liberalization of laws on obscenity?

[A] Ginzburg: Yes, with hindsight we now know the essence of the Roth decision was terribly dangerous. It opened up a Pandora's box. But few people were aware of what that decision could really lead to. The cases following Roth did indicate a liberalizing trend, but now the opinion in my case shows the true meaning of the Roth decision. And that is an unhappy, unfortunate and outrageous meaning.

[Q] Playboy: You agree, then, with Justice Black that there should be no restrictions whatever on freedom of speech.

[A] Ginzburg: Absolutely. Constitutionally, the American people ought to have the same right to decide what is true and beautiful and what will endure in sex literature as they have in all other areas of literature.

[Q] Playboy: But two of the justices who voted to reverse your conviction—Harlan and Stewart—nonetheless believe that the Government should ban hard-core pornography from the mails. Would you go along with this single exception to an absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment?

[A] Ginzburg: I would not, because "hard-core pornography" is no more definable than "obscenity." What this whole bag of smoke really means is that in these issues you're dealing with individual human taste. As D. H. Lawrence said, "What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another."

[Q] Playboy: But in defending your case in the United States District Court in Philadelphia, your lawyers introduced into evidence eight examples of what they called hard-core pornography to show the difference between that material and your publications. Doesn't this contradict your belief that hard-core pornography is not definable?

[A] Ginzburg: My lawyers persuaded me, and I think correctly so, that irrespective of my own personal feelings in the matter, my case had to be fought according to the definition of obscenity previously laid down by the United States Supreme Court. In other words, that was a practical legal decision. I will say that it was absolutely inconsistent with and repugnant to my own views on the subject.

[Q] Playboy: justice Clark, in his dissent to the Fanny Hill decision, expressed a widespread belief that "psychological and physiological studies clearly indicate that many persons become sexually aroused from reading obscene material." He went on to say that "while erotic stimulation caused by pornography may be legally insignificant in itself, there are medical experts who believe that such stimulation frequently manifests itself in criminal sexual behavior or other antisocial conduct." He cites as supporters of that belief a sociologist, police officials—including J. Edgar Hoover—and clergymen. What's your reaction to this argument?

[A] Ginzburg: I have seen absolutely no proof that pornography of the rankest kind results in antisocial behavior on the part of children or adults. And in the absence of such proof, anything and everything concerning sex ought to be published in this country. Instead of citing J. Edgar Hoover, who is not generally regarded as an expert in the behavioral sciences, Justice Clark would do better to consult a monumental study published by the Institute for Sex Research, founded by the late Dr. Kinsey. The title is Sex Offenders and it was published at the University of Indiana. After studying thousands of cases of sexual offenders, the book concludes that there is absolutely no link between pornographic literature and sex crimes.

[Q] Playboy: Purely hypothetically: what if substantial proof were presented that a link does exist? Would you then say that hard-core pornography should be banned, despite the First Amendment?

[A] Ginzburg: If there were indeed such proof, yes. The First Amendment in that case would become restricted according to the "clear and present danger" test enunciated by Justice Holmes many years ago. The exercise of free speech does not mean, he said, that someone can get up in a crowded theater and scream "Fire!" That kind of inhibition of free speech is warranted for the protection of society. But I insist that with regard to obscenity, we're grappling with a phantom. Obscenity is no more definable or measurable than witchery. In fact, the analogy has often been made between the crime of witchery in the days of the Salem witch hunts and the crime of obscenity in contemporary society. I think the comparison is valid and our descendants in future generations will look back with profound shame that publishers like myself who dealt honestly with sex had been hounded into prison as criminals in the middle of the 20th Century.

[Q] Playboy: On the question of literature inciting antisocial behavior, Justice Douglas' concurring decision in the Fanny Hill case quotes from a book called The Value of Pornography (Murphy): "Heinrich Pommerenke, who was a rapist, abuser and mass slayer of women in Germany, was prompted to his series of ghastly deeds by Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments. During the scene of the Jewish women dancing about the golden calf, all the doubts of his life came clear: Women were the source of the world's trouble and it was his mission to punish them for this and to execute them. Leaving the theater, he slew his first victim in a park nearby. John George Haigh, the British vampire who sucked his victims' blood through soda straws and dissolved their drained bodies in acid baths, first had his murder-inciting dreams and vampire longings from watching the 'voluptuous' procedure of an Anglican High Church Service!" Justice Douglas' irony is, of course, clear. Do you know of any comparable illustrations?

[A] Ginzburg: None that illustrates the follies of censorship as effectively as Douglas', but I do know of three criminal convictions in American history basel upon portions of the Bible. The first in volved George Francis Train, an eccentric and a passionate atheist, who in 1872 printed portions of the Holy Bible—the story of Solomon and his wives and sections of The Song of songs. He didn't alter the texts in the least, but he ran them with screaming headlines: Young Boy Masturbates! Stuff like that. Train was imprisoned for obscenity. But the case had a great twist. When it was brought up on appeal, the Court was reluctant to rule a portion of the Bible obscene and therefore, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, found Train insane and dismissed the conviction.

Another case, later in the 19th Century, involved a correspondence between a Baltimore preacher and an atheist. They carried on a theological argument with each other via postcards. One day the atheist put a portion of the Holy Bible on the back of a postcard; a postal inspector read it; and the guy was convicted of obscenity. The third case happened early in this century, when a man named Stephen Weis in Clay Center, Kansas, was convicted of obscenity for extracting passages from the Bible.

You know, Justice Douglas speculated that if someone were to take a portion from the Bible and advertise it in a titillating fashion, the Bible itse'f could be declared obscene. He was trying to demonstrate the idiocy of censorship by inventing extreme cases that everyone knows couldn't possibly happen. He apparently didn't know they already had happened.

[Q] Playboy: In view of your absolutist First Amendment position on freedom of speech and of the press—that anything goes—does your concept of total freedom also apply to sexual behavior outside of print or films?

[A] Ginzburg: I believe that the law ought not to be concerned with any private sexual behavior between mutually consenting adults.

[Q] Playboy: In this guideline you mentioned "adults." Would you exclude children entirely? A sizable number of psychiatrists and social psychologists claim that a stultifying phenomenon in this country is that children are largely forbidden from exploring sex.

[A] Ginzburg: True. I wouldn't offer children the same freedom as adults, but I do feel they should have a lot more freedom than they presently have. The current taboos in both adolescent sex behavior and sex education lead to the tremendous guilt feelings many people have about sex when they become adults. Let me give you an example of the absurdity of those laws that try to "protect" children against sex. There's a perfectly marvelous (continued on page 120) Playboy Interview (continued from page 54) picture, Shakespeare Wallah. It's a lovely movie, a tender love story with some sex scenes that are explicit but magnificently done. I have a 12-year-old daughter approaching puberty—she's at the age when conventional wisdom says she must be shielded and protected. However, I wanted her to see this film because I thought it would be valuable in helping her develop into a well-adjusted woman. But they wouldn't let her in, because she's not 18. There's a perfect example of obscenity laws working against the real interests of the young.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of restrictions should there be on what children can read or see?

[A] Ginzburg: None by the state. The selection of what children read or see is the parents' responsibility, not the Government's.

[Q] Playboy: Do you carry your permissive views about sex into your own sex life?

[A] Ginzburg: Certainly I do. I have a very happy love and sex life. They happen, by coincidence, to be completely within the framework of my marriage. But certainly I don't look down my nose at couples who aren't as lucky as we are and who have to find sexual satisfaction outside of marriage. It's their business.

[Q] Playboy: There's a theory that if a man really is fulfilled in love and sex, neither one dominates his life—they both form an important but not a pervasive part of his existence. Does that apply to you?

[A] Ginzburg: I don't know about the sex part, but I would say that love does dominate my life—whether it be the love of my wife or the love of the readers of my magazine or the love of the Supreme Court or the love of the American people.

[Q] Playboy: Do you expect the American people to love you?

[A] Ginzburg: In the long run, yes. The need to love and be loved is dominant in all people whether they recognize it or not. As a matter of fact, one psychiatrist speculated in a letter to Sloan Wilson that the Supreme Court, in ruling against me, was actually trying to gain the love of this country's right wing.

[Q] Playboy: In his column in the New York Post, Pete Hamill wrote: "The FBI and the rest of the country's law establishments have never been able to break up the animals in the Mafia. But there will always be tenth-rate Communists or so-called pornographers like Ginzburg to arrest to disguise their big failures." Do you feel that the Government's prosecution of you and your publications is connected with an attempt to disguise its "big failures"?

[A] Ginzburg: Consciously, no. Unconsciously, certainly. The unconscious motivations for being gratified by my conviction apply not only to law-enforcement officials but to a number of people not concerned with censorship. I think, for example, that many of the "hawks" on the Vietnam issue know that Fact has opposed the war vigorously through articles by Arnold Toynbee and Dr. Spock. Although the pro-war faction may welcome my conviction for conscious reasons concerning their feeling about obscenity, they may also welcome it unconsciously because they resent my outspoken views on the Vietnam situation.

[Q] Playboy: To what extent do you think the photographic essay in Eros, "Black and White in Color"—a series of nude photographs of a Negro male and a white female in various postures of embrace, not including intercourse—was a factor in rousing the authorities against you?

[A] Ginzburg: To a tremendous extent. About three or four days after that issue was deposited in the mails, two members of Congress from the South cried out for my head. I was informed that the postmaster of Birmingham, Alabama, was going to put the magazine before a grand jury there. Apparently someone at the Justice Department in Washington prevailed upon him not to do it, preferring instead that the case be brought to Philadelphia so that the racial aspects would not be so clearly evident. It's been speculated that if I'd been convicted in Birmingham. I'd now be facing not a five-year term but a death sentence.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that anti-Semitism—latent or overt—has anything to do with the opposition to you?

[A] Ginzburg: I think so, although it's impossible to document on official levels. Some have suggested—and I personally don't believe this to be the case—that Fortas' vote against me might have been a manifestation of reverse anti-Semitism. As the sole Jew on the Court, he didn't want to be associated with me. On unofficial levels, however, I'm subjected to open manifestations of anti-Semitism. I get hate mail saying, "Good for you, you kike Ginzburg! I hope your children have the intelligence to change their names."

[Q] Playboy: Whatever the causes that may have motivated the action against you, you've written in Fact that there were several unique aspects to the manner in which your case was prosecuted. For one thing, you wrote that it was practically unprecedented in the 90-year history of the Comstock Act for a publisher to be forced to defend himself in a city other than his own.

[A] Ginzburg: Yes. Obviously, they felt they had a belter chance for a conviction in a narrow-minded town like Philadelphia than in New York. A Philadelphia librarian wrote in the Library journal: "Ralph Ginzburg has about the same chance of finding justice in our courts as a Jew had in the courts of Nazi Germany." And one of the sad ironies of my case is that the very same materials that were ruled obscene in the Quaker City had been put before a grand jury in New York City and found not obscene.

[Q] Playboy: You also wrote thai it was unusual for the Government to bring criminal rather than civil charges against you. Would you explain that?

[A] Ginzburg: It was indeed unusual. You see, the Comstock Act has been the basic Federal censorship weapon. Under the act. the mailing of each copy of, or advertisement for, an obscene publication constitutes a separate breach of the law. It was passed in 1873 and was vigorously enforced until the turn of the century; but around then, people began to realize there was something tyrannical about imprisoning a man for something he had published. Accordingly, the post office established what it called its Administrative Review Board, which allowed for the possibility of censorship without criminal penalties. A publisher was now able to present his publications and learn in advance of mailing them whether or not he was committing a crime.

For example, when Grove Press published Lady Chatterley's Lover, they first sent a copy to the postmaster general, who then put it before the Administrative Review Board. The Board ruled against the book, but did not attempt to imprison its publisher. Grove Press then went into court and got the Administrative Review Board's ruling reversed. The same thing happened to me when I published An Unhurried Vieiv of Erotica. I submitted that book to the Review Board and was told it was not obscene, that there would be no prison penalty for mailing it.

However, soon after I began publishing Eros, Bobby Kennedy, then attorney general, and J. Edward Day, then postmaster general, decided they had better crack down on literature dealing forth-rightly with sex. They abandoned the Administrative Review Board procedure and revived the old Comstock Act. Not only that, but they had Congress amend the Comstock Act so that it became possible to indict a publisher in any city to which his publication was mailed.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel the pro-censorship forces singled you out for a concerted campaign?

[A] Ginzburg: You be the judge. Some 35,000 down-with-Ginzburg letters went to the post office, many of them identically written by entire classes of parochial school children. I've seen copies.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you get that figure?

[A] Ginzburg: From the postmaster general. His office is always quoting it as if it proves something. But if they want to play the numbers game, I can beat them, because their figure doesn't add up to the 150,000 people who bought the magazine. But the fact is that even if everyone in America—except one man—objected to Eros, the magazine had a right to exist.

[Q] Playboy: That is still a subject of active debate. Typical of the press division in this country, the Chicago Sun-Times, among more than a score of papers that editorialized in your favor, commented: "The Court has added a new dimension to censorship [and has] invited a whole new attack upon books, publishers and writers.... Close decisions often make bad law, and Monday's made bad law indeed." Yet Bob Ellison, an entertainment columnist for the same paper, wrote: "Nobody today is crying for the poor sex-starved clucks who fell for the mail-order pitch. They spent about 20 bucks for Eros, and a few other shekels for the other sheets, all of which they were told in sizzling prose would be hot stuff. They're to be pitied. They're to be pitied because any dumb slob who can only get his kicks if they come in a plain sealed wrapper is a cripple, a very special kind of emotional cripple, and Ginzburg exploited their sickness."

[A] Ginzburg: Isn't this the same Bob Ellison whose by-line I've seen in a schlocky girlie magazine? Not that I see anything wrong in that, but he's a fine one to cast stones. In any case, if he'd been familiar with Eros, he'd know it wasn't mailed in a "plain sealed wrapper." Indeed, we deliberately avoided the "feelthy peecture" connotation by putting the name on the wrapper of every issue. We were very proud of the magazine. We didn't want to "exploit" any guilt feelings Eros' subscribers might have had. And it's absurd to say Eros was aimed at "emotional cripples." It was not aimed at homosexuals. It was not aimed at sadomasochists. It was aimed at people with a completely mature, wholesome outlook toward love and sex. Many of our subscribers were also subscribers to the Saturday Review and American Heritage. Many were members of the American Bar Association.

[Q] Playboy: What about this comment from Barbara Tuchman, the historian, who protested the decision of the Authors League to file an amicus curiae brief in your case? In the Authors' Guild Bulletin, she wrote: "I do not think at this stage of our culture that freedom of speech, as regards artistic expression (including obscenity), and as distinct from political expression, needs as much concern as the proliferation of obscenity itself. In other words, I believe that the obsessive pornography in every realm of the printed word and its pictured accompaniments, is today a more clear and present danger in ultimate evil effect on society than the supposed danger to freedom of speech.... I do not think that the occasional efforts here and there to restrict the spread of obscenity are a danger to free speech or that they carry over to, or open the way to, censorship of political free speech. I do not think that freedom of speech is an absolute, necessarily endangered at its core when efforts are made to curtail its abuse. To insist that free speech is absolute is to abdicate one's right to exercise judgment and distinguish values—to pretend that we do not know the difference between what is smut and what is an honest attempt to say something meaningful."

[A] Ginzburg: That's double talk. And it's double talk of the most insidious kind, because the woman has a command of language, even if she doesn't have command of her emotions. The fact is that society has often been unable to recognize great works of art at the time they were created and instead has denigrated those works as rank pornography. A good example of that can be found in recent masterpieces of erotic literature. It wasn't until some 25 years after Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published that the book was recognized as the beautiful novel it is. When it came out, it was denounced in the very same language and in the same cavalier manner as Miss Tuchman now denounces Eros and my other publications. And how about James Joyce's Ulysses? It is now considered by many critics to be the greatest novel in the English language, but it was banned as obscene from this country until 1933—11 years after it was first published.

[Q] Playboy: Another critic of yours is I. F. Stone, a militant liberal who publishes a Washington newsletter. He said that since you are not among those who take the First Amendment seriously, he was not too disturbed by the Court's decision.

[A] Ginzburg: I regard I. F. Stone as one of the most energetic and important political journalists of our time. You know, Stone, to his credit, has always been very outspoken in maintaining that Communists should enjoy free speech. Yet he must know that their belief in the First Amendment is purely selfish—they would reserve free expression for themselves yet deny it to others. My position on the First Amendment is well known, however. I emphatically believe that everyone—not just Ralph Ginzburg—but everyone, including people like George Lincoln Rockwell, is entitled to speak out in this country. Yet Stone doesn't think I take the First Amendment "seriously." I wouldn't know how to explain Stone's motivation in attacking me, except to refer to Freud, who said a man's intellect, no matter how enormous, is circumscribed by the limitations of his emotions. Therefore, Stone's limited emotions concerning sex blind him to certain truths about free speech.

[Q] Playboy:The New York Times, which is usually firm on civil liberties, was another of your critics. In an editorial applauding the Court's decision, it said: "Ginzburg was clearly publishing pornography.... The Court inescapably concluded that Ginzburg had no scholarly, literary or scientific interests; he was strictly an entrepreneur in a disreputable business who took his chances on the borderline of the law and lost. He is no different from Edward Mishkin ... who was convicted for hiring hack writers to produce books deliberately aimed at an audience of sexual deviates.... It is entirely misleading to argue that these latest decisions have cast any shadow over the rights of genuine writers and legitimate businessmen; the scrupulous care taken by the Court in the Fanny Hill case demonstrates that once again. But the pornographic racketeers have cause to worry; and their defeat is society's gain."

[A] Ginzburg: It's obvious that the scribbler of that diatribe was so infected by his own antisexuality that he couldn't respond to the issues in a temperate manner. I was pleased, however, that a satire of the Court's decision by Russell Baker appeared on the same page as the editorial. The Times does have the integrity to prim opposing views side by side. But as for the editorial, clearly its writer had never laid eyes on Eros. He was totally unaware that during its one year of publication, Eros won a greater number of awards for artistic excellence and design than any other magazine in the United States. Among them was the Gold Medal of the Art Directors Club of New York—the most coveted design award in the country. Also, although one branch of the Government considered the magazine obscene, another branch—the State Department—had planned to send portions of Eros to the Soviet Union as part of an exhibition of excellence in American design.

[Q] Playboy: Your admiration for the Times is apparent. But how does it strike you emotionally to pick up the paper you read every day and see yourself classed among "pornographic racketeers"?

[A] Ginzburg: Well. I'm kind of accustomed to it. I used to grimace when I heard myself referred to as "The Smut King" or "The Kike Pornographer." But I know my position is correct, so it doesn't bother me that much anymore. I'm insulated against attacks, because I know I'll be vindicated in time. I also know that Margaret Sanger, now one of America's most honored citizens, was regarded as a menace to every respectable American home when she began her work to popularize birth control. History and society vindicated her. I am intrigued, though, that almost everyone has some kind of psychological need to flog me. Even some of my most passionate defenders feel it's necessary to add, "Well, the guy has every right to free speech, but he's a slob as a businessman." Nearly everybody goes out of his way to lake a whack at me. I'm like the scapegoat of our time.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you think, this is so?

[A] Ginzburg: Partly because of what I print in Fact. I hit pretty hard myself, and having hit a lot of people, they like to retaliate. Also, by espousing uninhibited sex, I stir the anxieties of many people and they have to purge themselves of sexual guilt by taking a swipe at me.

[Q] Playboy: You have also been criticized as publisher of Fact on the grounds that its articles are superficial and often misleading. Do you regard this as fair criticism?

[A] Ginzburg: I think it's fair to say that many of the early things we published—and I limit this almost entirely to our sensationalist cover lines—were misleading. But this is no longer the case, nor has it been for more than a year. It is not accurate to say that Fact has never published anything in depth. It was Fact that touched off the national debate now raging on automobile safety. In May 1964, Fact ran a piece entitled "American Cars Are Death Traps." It was the first article to emphasize that there is a tremendous emphasis on styling and a total neglect of safety in American cars today. The chief researcher on that piece, by the way, was Ralph Nader, who is now acknowledged by Congress and the public as the leading American critic of the automobile industry. But it was Fact that blew the lid off this scandal.

[Q] Playboy: Can Fact survive while you're away in prison?

[A] Ginzburg: Fortunately, Fact is in pretty good shape financially. It has a quarter of a million circulation now, and, under the able editorship of Warren Boroson, it will definitely remain in publication.

[Q] Playboy: How has the imminent prison term affected your family?

[A] Ginzburg: My wife has taken it quite well. She's a strong woman and she's as convinced as I am that my position has been correct and my activities free of guilt—despite what the courts may hold. And she has told the children that there have been evil laws throughout history, which courageous men have opposed, and, as a consequence, they've had to sacrifice parts of their lives.

[Q] Playboy: How have your children responded?

[A] Ginzburg: My oldest girl, who is twelve, was the most visibly upset. She was depressed for several days—as much by the feeling that her classmates would osiracize her as by the anticipation of losing her father for several years. But she lias adjusted as well as can be expected. The little kids—they're eight and five—are less able to grasp what's happening and probably will not show their feelings of loss until I'm gone.

[Q] Playboy: And what about your own adjustment to your imminent imprisonment?

[A] Ginzburg: The prospect is sickening. I feel emotionally castrated. You know, you're limited to something like two or three letters a week of a specified length to only certain individuals. You can't have a typewriter, and it's very hard to get any book or magazine you want. Certainly you can't choose the music you'd like to listen to. You can't go out to sniff the air when you want to. I live life to the hilt, and being behind bars is a very painful prospect.

[Q] Playboy: Have you considered writing a book while you're in prison?

[A] Ginzburg: Creative writers—writers of novels, short stories, poems, plays—can work while in prison. But I'm not that kind of writer—I use libraries, archives and the telephone. And I have to interview people. So I'm not going to be able to do very much, if anything, in prison.

[Q] Playboy: What do you plan to do after you're released from prison?

[A] Ginzburg: Well, I intend to return to Fact, but I won't publish Eros or anything dealing with sex until the Supreme Court clearly establishes that erotica can be dealt with honestly. I regard myself as a law-abiding citizen, and when the Supreme Court says, "Ginzburg, you can't go on publishing that kind of material," I intend to abide by that ruling.

[Q] Playboy: Doesn't that contradict your frequent assertion that you're a crusader for freedom of expression?

[A] Ginzburg: Not at all. I'm a law-abiding crusader. You know, I could have pleaded guilty at the trial and received a suspended sentence. I'd have lost a lot less money and personal energy, not to mention my personal freedom. But I chose to fight. I lost, and now I'll respect the decision.

[Q] Playboy: You didn't sound so reconciled immediately after the decision. The Washington Post quotes you as saying, "As long as I'm in prison, it's specious for Americans to pretend it's a free society." How much of that was rhetoric?

[A] Ginzburg: I believe that statement with all my heart. As long as a publisher, whether it's me or anyone else, can be imprisoned for five years for what he prints, America is not a free society. It's very easy for us to criticize the Soviet Union for imprisoning writers, because that's another country restricting freedom of speech. It's a lot harder to recognize a similar act of repression when it happens in our own society.

[Q] Playboy: We've discussed at length your lofty ideals concerning free speech and a free press. Many of your critics insist you are essentially a "promoter" and a "hustler." Do you see any contradiction in this?

[A] Ginzburg: There isn't any. Look, I am a vigorous, energetic promoter and hustler, but that doesn't preclude my being a serious publisher, too. Under all the razzle-dazzle, flash, noise and promotion I come up with, there is a very real, beautiful, important and worthwhile philosophy. It is a philosophy that will endure, and I express it in my publications.

[Q] Playboy: And what is that philosophy?

[A] Ginzburg: It boils down to two words: simple honesty—whether, as in Eros, about sex, or, as in Fact, about all the fields that are hypocritically dealt with by the bulk of American journalism.

[Q] Playboy: Can you give an example of how open publications ought to be about sex—by your criteria?

[A] Ginzburg: We will really have a sexually mature society when publications can address themselves to genital sex—that is, the consummation of the sexual act.

[Q] Playboy: Would you like to predict when that sexual millennium will arrive?

[A] Ginzburg: Not for quite a while, but possibly within our lifetime. Eventually this country will grow up to the point where it will recognize both in law and in fact what the Holy Bible says in memorable poetry: "Unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled ... is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

[As we go to press, the Supreme Court has denied a rehearing to Ralph Ginzburg. This means that unless Judge Ralph Body of the Philadelphia Federal District Court, in which Ginzburg was convicted, chooses to reduce his sentence, he faces the prospect of a five-year jail term and $42,000 in fines. With time off for good behavior, however, he may serve only half that time. Immediately after the news was released, we asked Ginzburg for a statement. "The American public," he told us, "has witnessed in my case an elaborate witch hunt in which the issue was the 'lust' of Ralph Ginzburg, and I am being sent to prison as a 20th Century witch. As for the closing of that last door of hope that I myself can remain free, it is a mordant relief that the suspense—which was a terrible element of the whole battle—is now over. I was crushed for the first ten or fifteen minutes after I heard that the Supreme Court had refused me a rehearing. But within four or five hours I was able to adjust, now that I know I'm definitely going to prison. It's kind of like the aftermath of playing a one-armed bandit. I'm sure there will be heartaches—kissing my wife and children goodbye and missing them. But in a way it's as though I were hit by a drunken driver and were going to be laid up for two or three years in a hospital. It happened. It's too bad it happened, especially at a crucial time for Fact magazine and for me, but we'll both survive it. Both of us will be hurt, but that's part of life. And that, it's now clear, is the price you have to pay if you choose to do the kind of work I've done. So, if five of the nine justices on the Supreme Court wanted me to waste a few years of my life, they've succeeded."]